


Found Your Writing On My Wall

by thalialunacy



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-04
Updated: 2010-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-26 16:29:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/285442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thalialunacy/pseuds/thalialunacy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Chris dates the Australian girl because he can't have Karl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Found Your Writing On My Wall

**Author's Note:**

> **Teaser/Summary** : _He shouldn’t call her. He knows he shouldn’t. It goes against his upbringing and his personal morals to call a girl just because her accent makes him miss a possession that was never really his. He picks up his phone anyway._  
>  **Disclaimer** : Obvious fictional content is FICTIONAL. Please, please don’t sue me. And don’t be hatin, we just like the fuckin.  
>  **Contains** : RPF!, dirty het, dirty slash, mary-sue as deus-ex-machina, opera, bad pick-up lines, manly angst, the author projecting her wishes for ST:XII, a Lindsay Lohan joke, cigarette smoking (a lot of it), totally unmanly fluffiness  
>  **Warning** : If you've ever been in love with a married person, this might hit you in the kisser.

He sat there for like twenty minutes before she paid him any attention. This isn’t unheard of—life isn’t some Fitzgerald novel, after all—but still. Most people are a little jumpier than that, and he knew she’d noticed that someone had sat down next to her. The subtle shift in her movements, the little cough. Tricks of the trade. Or something.

Then their knees accidentally jostled and she looked up from her book with a brief generic apologetic smile ready on her face—and froze upon recognition. He waited for a squealing sort of reaction, or at least a token ‘oh aren’t you that guy—,’ because habits and human nature, etc., but in a split-second the recognition disappeared from her face and she nodded in bland apology before going back to her book and wine.

So now he’s blinking down at his overpriced hotel-bar beer. And okay, even this kind of willful ignorance isn’t unheard of in LA, but this isn’t LA, and people have not been shy over the past few days. And she doesn’t have that LA-hardened look about her, anyways, that vague dislike that the unsuccessful have for those that have made it.

Well, whatever. He’s got places to be—Uh, maybe. He looks at his watch for about the eighteenth time, willing his phone to ring to say his flight’s been worked out and he can— Hang on, she’s reading a… She’s reading a goddamned Nick Hornby book. And not one of the ones that’s been made into a movie, either. He didn’t even realize women _read_ that shit. Huh.

He’s done with his drink and about to give in to the restlessness and go for another walk (okay, smoke) while he waits, when the bartender, a fugly guy with the bad kind of dreadlocks but a surprisingly charming smile, asks her if she wants another glass of wine.

He tries not to visibly start at her answer. Not the words— The way she _says_ them.

First off, she’s got the voice of a high-quality phone-sex operator, lush and low and slightly smoky, but smart, with that hint of sardonic wit.

But even that’s not the thing that does him in. No, the thing that does it is the way the vowels come out. Tangy, tinkly, dry, flat, unpredictable. Ringing of a place where the water goes down the drain the wrong way, where Christmas is in the summer and Xena took over every facet of pop culture for way too long.

Looks like he’s found a way to occupy the next hour or so.

He signals for another beer, and when it’s put in front of him he rotates the glass in his palm, rifling through lines in his head. One of these days he’s going to try ‘Nice shoes, wanna fuck,’ but he senses that today is not that day.

He’s contemplating when she startles him by speaking first. “It’s a crap book.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re staring at my book, so I felt it proper to warn you that it’s crap. Not his best, at the very least.”

He hadn’t realized just how much he likes hearing ‘crap’ as an adjective. “Okay, well, thank you.” He rotates his beer again, then decides what the hell. “But I wasn’t only looking at the book.”

She swivels her head and looks at him, blinking once as she regards him. Then there’s a twinkle in her eyes. “What’s next, ‘That dress looks great on you, but it’d look better on my floor’?”

Chris can’t help but smile, shrugging comically. “I was going to go with ‘Nice shoes, wanna fuck?’”

She laughs openly, throwing her head back, and it’s a huge startling sound but her teeth are straight and white and somehow it makes him feel better, to not be the only one in the room with a head-turningly geeky laugh.

“And here I was hoping for some quality time with Nick and Ste Michelle, but instead I end up sat next to a guy with a penchant for strangers and dodgy pickup lines.”

“It’s just your lucky day.” He tilts his head towards the door. “Cigarette?”

“Hah. Dodgy pickup lines _and_ filthy habits.”

“I’m a complex individual.”

“Clearly.”

“So will you have one with me?”

“Depends. What kind?”

“Uh… American Spirits?”

“Hippie.”

“Well, I _did_ go to Berkeley. And once you’ve started on these, anything else tastes like burnt ass.”

“Eloquent.”

“I try. So will you deign have one?”

“I suppose. Lead on, MacDuff.”

The bartender points them in the direction of the back alley—Good man, he’ll get tipped well—and she graciously allows him to open the door for her.

Once outside, he suppresses a shiver. God, he’s almost forgotten how cool the nights here can be. He stuffs the hand not holding his cigarette into the pocket with the pack, using his other fingers to pass her hers.

She doesn’t have a lighter on her, but lights up like a pro once she has a hold of his. “Quit?” he asks, curious.

“Quitters never win.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“No, I’m…” She exhales and waves the cig around vaguely. “Not supposed to. Blood pressure, etc, etc.”

“You mean they’re bad for you?”

“So I’ve heard,” she mimics with a small smile.

“Huh.”

They smoke in companionable silence for about three-point-five seconds, the most smokers usually let go by, then he forges on ahead. “So what do you do?”

She doesn’t answer right away, takes a drag instead. “I’m a performer,” she says finally.

He tries not to quirk his eyebrows. In his experience, that’s code for ‘stripper,’ which, okay, she’s beautiful enough, with pale skin and a nose that somehow holds together an arresting face, but she just doesn’t seem the type. They’re easy to spot, and they usually do not hang around four star hotel bars drinking glasses of expensive wine. But you never know, he muses. “Locally?” He points his finger down and spins it in an indicative circle.

“No.”

“Alright.” Nothing more is forthcoming, clearly, so he switches it up. “You’re not going to ask me what I do?”

She shoots him a startled look—A-ha, so she _had_ recognized him, he thinks with a sense of triumph that then sickens him slightly—then sees he’s teasing and rolls her eyes. “Maybe I should. Should pretend I’ve no idea who you are.”

“You pulled it off pretty well back in there.” He nods in the general direction of the hotel wall.

“Yeah, I…” She looks carefully at something on the ground. “I have this thing about not acknowledging celebrities. I was sat next to Josh Jackson at a restaurant in London once and pretended I had no idea who he was.”

“Why?”

She finds this question surprising, apparently, and sucks in some more smoke before answering. “Because anything else seems rude to me?”

“You don’t think they ask for it? Deserve it or whatever?” The pronoun choice is, he supposes, cheap of him, but that’s how he’s always done it and it’s not likely to change.

If she notices it, she doesn’t comment. “Either way you mean that, probably not—They get plenty of accolades when they’re at premieres or awards shows etc, in the proper sort of arena, right? And I don’t think daily harassment’s part of the ‘if you want the glory, you gotta take the little heartaches that go with it’ thing. Seems more to me like the heartaches should be left to hours at the gym and having people on the internet call you a twat.”

“People on the internet call me a twat?”

“Second person ‘you,’ you megalomaniac. You know what, I take it back, you deserve to have your dinners interrupted.”

“Have you ever wanted to be?”

“Have I ever wanted to be interrupted during dinner?”

“Famous.”

“Oh, that,” she laughs sardonically. “Of course. Anybody who’s on stage for a living and says they don’t want to be famous is lying. It might not be their first priority, but it’s always there. Performers want attention, the end.” He opens his mouth but she shakes her head wryly. “Don’t even try saying you were different.”

“Actually, I was going to agree with you.”

“Oh.” This startles her into quiet, and he almost smiles. Her blue eyes really are quite something, like seeing his own reflected back at him in a different face. And her lips might be plain, free of the sticky gloss so hip with the kids these days, but they’re full and expressive and they hint that talking might not be the only thing they do well.

He drops his butt and crushes it with his heel. “Come on, let me buy you some more of that ridiculous wine.”

She considers him as she takes the last possible drag off her stub of a cigarette, then shrugs and carefully smooshes the cherry under her toe. “It’s a free country. And it’s a good wine.”

“Are you a wine connoisseur?” he asks as they wend their way back to the bar.

“Oh, God no. I just know what tastes good, and that generally the more you spend on it, the better it tastes.”

He laughs at that, settling back on his stool. He’s just raised his hand to motion for her drink when his phone buzzes in his pocket. _Done_ , the text from his PA reads. _Get to the airport right now._ “Fuck. Listen. I’ve gotta go. And I won’t be back tomorrow.”

Her eyebrow goes up. “What does this look like, _Cheers_?”

“You do kind of resemble Norm.”

She smiles. “And you make about the prettiest Diane I ever did see.”

“You know, I’ve heard that before.”

“Why am I not surprised.”

“It’s the feathery hair. Listen, give me your phone number.”

She laughs, picking up her wineglass. “Yeah, right.”

“Yeah, right,” he counters doggedly. Her accent is like a bone he _has_ to get his teeth into.

She looks at him, her glass paused halfway to her mouth, and blinks several times before she actually believes that he’s serious. And actually he’s not even sure she thinks he’s serious then, but at least she acquiesces. “Alright, fine.” She puts down her drink, rifles through her purse for a pen, then reaches for a napkin.

When he looks at it, the area code is nowhere he recognizes. He looks up at her. “Am I going to have to fly somewhere to take you out to dinner?”

She hesitates, then answers, a smile hiding behind her lips. “Depends on how bad the traffic is on the 10.”

The grin splits his face. He holds out his hand. “Chris Pine. Nice to meet you.”

“Jessica Painter,” she says as she shakes it. “Have a safe flight.”

\---

Weeks later, he finally unpacks fully enough to discover the slip of paper on which is written _Jessica - 360-555-3927_. The handwriting is incredibly bad, the seven crossed like she was grade-schooled by a European tutor or something. He stares at it.

He had almost forgotten. He assumes for a moment that she’s forgotten too— until he remembers who he is, with that same start he gets every time he remembers he’s not just Some Guy anymore. It’s equal parts thrill, dread, guilt, elation, and regret, remembering that he’s fucking _famous_. The stuff poetry’s made of, really.

But that’s for another day, another notebook. For today, he has this number, found at the bottom of the carry-on he doesn’t use very often.

He stares at it, searching for direction in the messy, looping numbers. He shouldn’t call her. He knows he shouldn’t. It goes against his upbringing and his personal morals to call a girl just because her accent makes him miss a possession that was never really his.

He picks up his phone anyway.

“Yes, hello?” a slightly annoyed-sounding American woman answers.

Chris kind of blinks. “Yeah, this is Chris, and I’m calling for Jessica?”

There’s a shuffle and a muffled curse, then she’s there, the low accented tones filled with laughter. “Yes, hello. Now, would this be Chris the boy that I had a crush on in primary school, Chris the girl that had a crush on me in upper school but then found Jesus, or Chris the tardy actor who most likely just found my number at the bottom of his man-purse?”

His smile is wry. “I’ll let you guess.”

“Might take a while.”

“Well speed it up, because I’ll be at the Monarch hotel bar at nine tonight.”

She lets out a little laugh. “Awfully short notice, Mr. Mysterioso.”

“And?”

“And what are you, an idiot? I’ll be there.”

\---

“You picked my one night off,” she says as she slides onto the stool beside him, “and picked a hotel I actually knew. Uncanny.” Then she sees the glass of wine waiting for her. “Uncannier.”

“You haven’t tasted it yet.”

She waves this off. “Free hooch always tastes awesome.”

He laughs outright at that. “You just said ‘hooch.’”

She takes a drink, looking at him, her eyes twinkling. “Think they’ll chuck me out of the bar for my uncouth language? I mean, I‘m dressed smartly enough, right?”

She kind of swivels to him as she takes off her jacket, and he makes a great show of looking her up and down. She’s in a pencil skirt and heels, which show off her calves but are still classy enough, and her blouse is a shade of green that should not be attractive, but somehow works with her long auburn braid…

“I call it ‘baby poop green.’”

… not to mention her personality. “Fitting.” And he means it, in all those ways.

She regards him, holding a sip of wine her mouth, then nods and swallows. “Thank you.” And so does she, he thinks. And he smiles.

\---

“So come on, I have to ask. Why are you here and not back in the penal colony?”

“Never heard that one before.”

“I’m just getting started.”

“You’ve been practicing?”

“Sort of.”

She looks at him, one eyebrow slightly raised.

“I have a—uh, coworker from New Zealand.”

She makes a little hmming noise, but he’s got his gaze squarely on his food so he doesn’t have to see the comprehension he knows is on her face. Fuck being famous sometimes, fuck it right off.

She can also seem to sense that bit, the bit with his ire, or perhaps this fits into her strange philosophies on how to treat celebrities, because all she says is, “Slightly different jokes there,” in a light tone.

And he’s so grateful he wants to kiss her for it. Instead he confirms it for her, trying to be offhand and mostly succeeding. “So he tells me.”

She deftly changes the subject. “And to answer your question, same thing that brings everyone else here.”

“Ah.”

“City of Broken Dreams, all that jazz.”

That finally gets him to look at her, with a small snort. “All that jazz?”

She shrugs. “My mum likes musicals?”

“Oh God, mine too.”

They share a smile. “But you don’t sing?”

“What? One of my secret ambitions is to be a rockstar.”

“And that qualifies as singing?”

“Does it matter when there are leather pants involved?”

She throws her head back with a laugh. “Fuck no.”

“This is what I’m saying.”

\---

“Do you?” he asks when they’re nearly done eating.

“Do I what?” she asks in return, spearing the last bite of her ravioli.

“Sing.”

She chews deliberately, looking at her plate. “Do I sing?”

“Yes, you know, notes, lyrics, all that jazz?” She takes a slow sip of wine and he watches, curious. “And why are you stalling?”

“Why am I stalling?”

He rolls his eyes. “What, are you really bad at it? Did you get traumatized by your debut as Snowflake Number Three in the third grade play?”

“Oi, watch it.”

“Hah, see? So you do sing.”

She throws her napkin down onto the bar and pokes at his shoulder. “That’s right, I do sing, and I’m bloody good at it, and I’ve had enough wine that I just might show you if you push it, so please stop pushing because if I do end up showing you, I will surely hate myself in the morning.”

“Nuh-uh,” he tsks, poking at her shoulder in return. “You’d only hate yourself in the morning if you sucked at it, which you say you don’t.”

He waggles his eyebrows and she lets out something resembling a growl. They have a bit of a staring match—and he begins to think he knows what people mean when they say his eyes are like lasers, Jesus—then finally she reaches for her phone. “Fine,” she says as she scrolls through the thing to find a name. “But not one word from you about it.”

“But what if—“

“I said no. Chuy!” she exclaims brightly into her cell. “Hey baby, yeah, I need a favor. I’m in your hotel. Is Ballroom 4 booked for the next half hour or so?” Chris finally closes his mouth as she listens for the answer. “Cool, can you unlock it for me? You know it’s the best piano.” A smile spreads across her face. “Excellent. And pay no attention to the person I’m with; I’m out of his league. Love you dollface, see you in five.” She slides the phone shut triumphantly.

Chris lets out a surprised laugh. “What the hell?”

She signals for the bill, then smiles a bit mockingly at him. “You want me to sing or not?”

“Well, I—“

“Shut up and say yes.”

“I can’t do both those at once, you—“

She claps a hand over his mouth. “Oh my god. Are you always this insolent?”

“Yes?” he mumbles into her hand with a grin. The bill comes and she has to let him go; they scrabble over the check for a minute but finally he just gives her a look that clearly means ‘I’m rich and you’re an idiot,’ and she acquiesces.

She grumbles, though. “It’s a wonder you have any friends.”

“Some people find me charming.”

She snorts as she gathers her purse and jacket. “Some people want into your pants.”

He can’t pass that one up. “Some people?”

She rolls her eyes at him for real and holds out her hand. “Come on, let me humiliate myself properly, and then I’m going home to pass out in peace.”

The smile she gives him is genuine, though, and there’s a warmth in his chest as he smiles back and takes her hand.

She tugs him out of the bar and down the ubiquitous long hotel hallway, and suddenly they’re in front of huge double doors and a huge guy whose nametag says ‘Jesús.’

Said Jesús opens the door for them, and Jessica peeks her head inside. Her “Ah, perfect” echoes inside the room, then she comes back to plant a kiss on the big guy’s cheek. “Thank you so much. I owe you.”

“Anytime, Princess.”

Her nose wrinkles at the nickname and Chris laughs. Chuy turns to him, so he sticks out a hand. “Chris.”

Chuy’s face gets even more stoic, if that’s possible, and although he shakes Chris’ hand he doesn’t speak to him. He speaks to Jessica instead. “Princess, I can tell from the way you're talking that you've had a lot of wine. I’m here for another couple hours but even after that— You know where to find me, yeah?”

She laughs and puts a hand on his cheek. “I can handle this whippersnapper, my dear Jesús, but thank you.”

Chuy glances at Chris again, then nods at them both and departs. Chris feels like he’s passed some strange Big Brother test, both in the _Family Ties_ way and the _1984_ way. But he shakes it off when she tugs him into the room.

It’s huge, of course, and the piano tucked into one corner is huge as well. She futzes with the bench, then sits, her legs spreading the pencil skirt snugly so one foot can reach the pedals while the other stays back. She laughs as she has to try twice to put up the keyboard cover, and he can tell she’s nervous. “Hey,” he tries to dissuade, “just, ignore me, okay? Pretend I’m not here.”

She guffaws. “Does that work for you? When you’re working?”

“Um… no.”

“This is what I’m saying,” she mimics perfectly his words from earlier. Then she tugs at his side belt loop until he’s standing behind her. “One of my favorite artists once said an audience is like an unexpected dinner guest—you have to talk to them, work with them, so you can somehow figure out if they want steak or fish. Or tofu.”

Chris grins. “Truth.”

“Although I already know you eat steak, so just—“ She waves a hand vaguely. “Okay?”

He nods, and he mostly does understand. “Okay.”

Her fingers are kind of stubby, is the first thing he notices when she puts them on the keyboard, but as she starts playing, they easily coax a lovely sound out of the hard keys. And when she starts singing he finds himself leaning forward, trying to dip into the sphere of whatever magic she has that lets this happen through her.

Eventually, he gives in and actually steps closer, and by the time she’s at what he thinks is the bridge, he’s as close to her as he can manage without actually touching her, trying to feel her movements and imbibe the music in as visceral way as he can manage.

It’s fucking awesome, is what it is, and he wants to lap it up.

When she’s done, he slides down to sit on the bench beside her. She scootches over minutely, easily, and their legs rest comfortably against each other as he looks at her and she looks at the keyboard. She keeps touching it, just little caresses, layings-on of hands, and he’s got to admit he’s jealous, of both her, for being the recipient of such talent, and the piano, for being the recipient of such touches.

He watches her, and he ponders. She’s not his usual type, especially not recently. But she’s just—she’s comfortable, to him. Nothing electric, nothing romantic, just… Warm and fuzzy and somewhere he can be whatever it is he is—even if that’s nothing, because sometimes it seems everything he is took off on that plane.

He immediately banishes that whole sphere of thought, focusing instead on her face. Then he notices the tears in her eyes. He reaches out to wipe gently at one, and she immediately smiles in a cringe-y sort of way. “Pathetic, isn’t it?” she says while she swipes at the remainder.

Chris shrugs. “I’ve seen studly old men weep like babies because of music, so no, not pathetic. Hell, my dad chokes up at every baseball game we go to.”

She laughs. “I’m related to the guy that wrote the US national anthem, so there you go.”

“I thought it was a bar tune.”

She looks at him in surprise. Her eyes roam all over his face, but then settle to dancing between his eyes and mouth. “Well, I’ll be, Mr. Pine,” she says in a somehow dead-on southern drawl, “but I am impressed. Not just good looks after all.”

And it just seems to be the right kind of moment, so he leans in and kisses her.

She stills, one hand on a group of black keys, and her lips press back lightly before she’s turning away from him, clearly embarrassed. “Oh god, don’t, I’m a snotty mess.”

He can’t help but smirk a little. Her lips are warm and soft. He likes it. “Three tears hardly qualify. But—“ He reaches into his inside jacket pocket for his handkerchief and sends a silent thank-you to his grandmother for her incessant harping on gentlemanly behavior. “Use this and then tell me about the thing with the guy with the bar tune.”

She laughs wetly but not weakly, and does as instructed. She blows her nose once, nearly delicately. Her cheeks are still red. “He wrote…” She licks her bottom lip as she clears her throat. He tracks the movement with his eyes. “The poem. He wrote a poem while he was a prisoner on a boat, watching the port get sacked, and that poem— it later got put to a bar tune and then you tossers stole it and —“

“—perverted it into our national anthem,” he says into her lips, because watching them form the word ‘tosser’ had been too much to resist. “Yes, I know.”

She makes a noise in her throat, a tasty one, and Chris is about to lean in again but she pulls back. “Just—“ She blushes even more, turns away, wipes at her eyes with her hand and her nose with the handkerchief, a couple times. Then she tucks the handkerchief in her purse and turns back to him. “I’ll get that laundered and send it back to you.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I insist.”

He puts up his hands in surrender. “Fine.”

“I don’t think it’d go for very much on EBay, anyways.”

“Not with your snot in it, no.”

She laughs. “Thank you. I have now heard one of the most famous actors in the world speak of my snot. My life is complete.”

Her smile is huge and he has to kiss her again, and it goes further than it probably should but she’s not objecting—She’s making more little noises and kissing him back, in fact, swiping her tongue against his and yeah, he now totally does not care that she’s not his usual type.

So he brings his hands up to her face, her neck, and kisses her how he wants to kiss her, thoroughly and unhurriedly. It spirals, though, and when he can feel it going way too far for a hotel ballroom, his unavoidable sense of propriety kicks in and he pulls away, running his fingers up and down her arms and trying to think of how exactly he can say what he’s thinking without sounding like a bad porno or a stuttering idiot.

But again, she startles him by saying it first: “Nice shoes. Wanna fuck?”

The laugh bursts out of him and he throws back his head to accommodate it. “I cannot believe you just said that.”

She bats her eyelashes extravagantly, then grins. “Sorry, I suppose I should’ve been more coy and feminine about it.” She cups his face in her hands, her face very serious. “I think that your taste in shoes is extraordinary, and I should like to enquire as to whether your taste in underclothing is similarly robust.”

He laughs again, and presses his lips against hers again, and gets caught up in it again. He pulls her against him and kisses his way along her jaw to her ear. “We could get a room.”

She makes a sound of protest. “This is an expensive place, you know, and—" She squeaks a little when he nips at the skin right below her ear, trying to kiss the hesitation out of her, and although she brings up a hand to clutch at his hair, she still plows ahead. "And I know you have all this fame and fortune nonsense but…" He nips a little harder and the words stutter into a soft moan.

He pulls back, and it’s his turn to cup her face in his hands as his eyes twinkle at her. “And what good is all this fame and fortune nonsense if I can’t have my way with a woman when I want to?”

"Well." She looks at him for a moment before leaning in to kiss him lightly, trailing her lips down his jaw, which is a little rough by now but her voice—her _accent_ is then rough in his ear. “I find it difficult to argue with that.”

“Oh thank Christ,” Chris exhales into her hairline.

She laughs and sits up, clearing her throat as she gets out her phone again. One hand is still cupping the back of his neck as she pushes buttons. “Chuy. Yes. No. The opposite.” Whatever Chuy says must be funny, because she grins. “Excellent. Put it under my name.”

His eyebrow is up, for sure. “You done this before?”

She just grins at him, all teeth and lips and sparkling eyes, and stands. “Come on,” she says, holding her hand out to him. “Or I'll call Chuy back and tell him you're being a nancy.”

"Well," he says as he stands and takes her hand, "that wouldn't do."

"No, it would not."

And it all goes rather quickly from there, quickly but unrushed—which seems like a ridiculous pairing of words, Chris thinks as he kneels before her and kisses his way under that pencil skirt, but it's poetic and, at any rate, accurate. She's no demure flower but she's willing to savor as well, to explore and to let him do as he wishes.

She stills once he gets to just above her knee, though. "Oh damn,” she curses softly.

“What? Are you…You know, is it…?” He gestures at her lady-bits in a cyclical fashion. “Because that’s okay with me, if you—”

“No! But goddamn did you just win yourself some points.” She leans down and he smirks into the brief kiss.

“Then what is it?”

“I, uh… I only did the cursory shave today.”

“The cursory shave?” But he’s smiling, because he knows, and he’s still pulling apart her thighs.

She swats at his shoulder. “Well come on, how many people actually believe they’ll be in this position?”

He grins fully and plants his lips on the very inside of her left thigh.

“…okay don’t answer that. Just—Eee—I trust you won’t think less of my femininity because I’m not properly—“ She gasps. “Oh, fuck it,” she says roughly, threading her fingers through his hair and welcoming him in.

Her noises are heartening and she's slick and warm and Chris enjoys himself, per usual. When her breath starts to hitch, he tips her hips up a little and steps it up a notch.

“I should warn you…" she manages to say. He doesn't stop. "Nobody makes me…” He slips two fingers inside her— "Nobody— _fuck_ —" –spelunks around a little bit, while steadily increasing the movements of his tongue, and is highly rewarded by the sharp cry that comes out of her mouth when her body softly seizes around him then flutters into contractions.

He stills his mouth but not his fingers, and gently rides through it with her. There's a sizable smug grin on his face. “Nobody does what now?”

She looks at him through narrowed eyes. “Makes me come the first time. Or most times. Jesus Christ.”

“It’s Chris.”

“Oh my god, shut the fuck up.” And she drags him up for a kiss, and they're settling back on the bed in a pile so it takes him about a second to realize she’s _really_ interested in lapping up all the taste from his tongue, his lips, his cupid’s bow.

He pulls back. “You sly dog. You like women, don’t you?”

Spots of pink appear on her cheeks. “What gave me away?”

He passes his forefinger across his chin, where evidence of her still lingers, then drags it across her bottom lip. She whimpers and immediately sucks the finger into her mouth. And then it’s his turn to whimper: she might like women but she sure as shit seems to know how to fellate his finger.

And it's her turn to smirk. “You're not the only one with some tricks up your sleeve." She pushes him off her. "One of my ex-boyfriends is bisexual," she continues casually as she gets him onto his back and climbs on top of him, her body warm around his knees. "He gave me some pointers." With a wicked glint in her eye, she slides herself down the bed.

"Pointers?" Chris manages, his fingers already itching to tangle into her hair.

She makes quick work of the fastenings on his pants. "He drew charts, my young friend."

He snorts, then inhales as her warm hand finds his cock. "Charts aren't exactly the same as hands on—" And then her mouth is on him, and— "experience. Jesus fucking Christ."

She meets his gaze, which is hot as shit with eyes that fucking color, then does this thing with her tongue and he kinda can't focus anymore, so instead he lets his eyes slide shut as his head sinks back into the bed. And he tries not to think of anything but this moment, of anything but her mouth and his dick, but his brain, his poor pathetic love-addled brain, has other ideas, ideas that involve a different mouth, among other things— and he can't help it as the image starts to encroach upon his frontal lobe—

 _No_. Fuck that.

With a growl, he leans down to cup the back of her neck and stop her motions. She lifts off, leaving a small kiss on the tip, then raises an eyebrow at him, and it's such a fucking familiar motion that he lets out a pained groan. He's sure his face will betray him so he pulls her up quickly and kisses the living daylights out of her, one hand fumbling at his back pocket.

"I've got it," she says softly into his mouth. She trails her lips down his jaw to his ear and neck as her hands deftly retrieve his wallet— "Up," she says so he'll hump off the bed for access— and unfold it to search out the condom.

His hands weave into her hair and he kisses her with gratitude as her warm, steady hands work the rubber onto him. And then she's guiding him in and they both let out a hiss of air as she sinks down onto him.

She smiles down at him, touches his cheek, her thumb tracing his lower lip. He can't help but smile back and push up into her, and hustle his hands under that ridiculous blouse. She rocks into him, tipping her head back with a satisfied sort of murmur, but when his fingertips touch her nipples she bucks hard, crying out.

Pleased, he pauses long enough to get her shirt unbuttoned and her bra pushed aside, then moves his hips again, syncing them up into an easy rhythm so he can explore this newly exposed skin with his hands. She's incredibly responsive, and it's not long before he's propped up onto his elbows, his mouth on her breasts as she rides him with deep rolls of her hips.

Their rhythm begins to disintegrate and Chris' balls are starting to tighten, so he clutches her bum and rolls until he's on top. She unhesitatingly lifts her legs up to his shoulders and curses as he thrusts back into her with a purpose.

It's a good curse, he can tell, from the movements of her hips and the way her fingers are clutching at his shoulders, his back— Sliding down his back, then one pushes at his hip, setting the nerves to singing as he feels his orgasm nearing, and, if her sounds are any indication, hers too.

He leans down, nips at her collar, her neck, her lips, and nearly jumps out of his skin when one of her hands slides neatly down, running along the line and in between to graze not so lightly over his asshole, even pushing in just the littlest distance— But instead of jumping out of his skin he just comes, and comes and comes and _comes_ into her like a freight train as her body contracts around him.

"Holy shit," he chokes out as he lowers himself on shaking arms. Encouraged by the hand cupping the back of his neck, he buries his face in the crook of her neck and just lays there like a slug for a moment.

They're still mostly dressed, and her legs are still loosely around him while he softens inside her and they catch their breaths. After a few minutes, she nudges at him. "Unless you move within the next ten seconds, I call dibs on the bathroom."

He chuckles into her skin, the reluctantly slides out and sits up. He doesn't stand up, though, instead motioning towards the connecting door. "Ladies first."

She grins at him. "Hardly a lady, but I'll take advantage of you while I can." She kisses him on the forehead. "I'll be quick-like."

"Thanks."

When she's finished, he makes quick work of his own cleanup, his mind folding over all his options. He walks back in the room already talking. “Listen, I’ve gotta be honest, here, I’m not—“

But she’s sitting on the bed, her skirt and her bra properly rearranged but sans blouse, shaking her head. “Don’t." She holds out a hand. "I’m just here to help you forget about her.”

Surprised into submission, he takes the proffered hand and lets her pull him back onto the bed. “Her.”

“Whoever it is you’re clearly trying to fuck out of your brain. It’s fine. You’re not the only one.” She snorts. “I just hope it’s not the same her.”

Chris’ brain is tripping over itself a little trying to catch up. “I doubt that.”

She hears something in his voice, she must, because she looks at him carefully for a long moment. Then her countenance softens. “I believe you.” She tugs him closer, lands a kiss on his mouth. "Now are we going to get our money's worth out of this room or what?"

He grins, and dives in again.

\---

Hours later, he's too tired to dream. Which is a damn good thing, because waking up with a new wet spot and a different name on your lips—Well, Jessica's understanding, but that would be above and beyond, and she doesn't deserve such blatant disrespect. His grandmother would be appalled enough at his behavior as it is.

\---

They part in the clear light of dawn, having agreed beforehand that earliest would be best, to avoid photogs and to get on with their days.

She hugs him just inside the door, tightly, and he reciprocates, his eyes shut tightly against everything that's coming. "You have my number," she murmurs as she draws back. She looks him square in the eye. "Don't be afraid to use it when you need to."

And she kisses him on the cheek and is gone.

\---

He's okay for a while. Really. He is. He ignores the kiwi fruit in the produce section, he turns the channel when there's a _Lord of the Rings_ marathon or, God forbid, a rugby game, he artfully dodges when Zach brings up anything even obliquely related.

Totally okay.

Then a few weeks later, he sees pictures of Karl and Natalie at the premiere of Karl's latest chest-baring dash-and-slash Epic Picture of Epicosity. Karl's decked out in the classiest fucking suit possible, looking at once victorious and humble, and of course effortlessly smoking hot. And he's got his fingers laced securely through Natalie's.

Chris wants to throw up. Instead, he picks up the phone.

This time, there's not nearly as much talking. Her eyes have a wild sadness to them, and he has a feeling he's not the only one chasing away memories tonight.

\---

He's okay for a while after that, too. A longer while. He even cracks a joke about it, something about Xena, but Zach doesn't laugh and the moment is fucking awkward.

He takes another drag of his cigarette and moves on.

Then, one perfectly normal Tuesday, the script for the sequel lands on his front step.

\---

"It's sent by messenger, see," he explains to her as he lays sprawled naked and face down on the spacious hotel bed, his chin over the edge and his eyes trained on the amber-liquid-filled glass resting on the carpet directly below. "Super stealth secret. They keep everything so fucking secret."

She's sprawled out naked too, but face up, her shoulders pillowed in the small of his back and her head pleasantly heavy on his upper torso. Every once in a while she lifts up to take a drink, and the silk of her hair tickles him a bit. She's fallen behind in the drinking competition, though, whereas Chris is in it to win it.

"Well, I can't blame them," she says matter-of-factly, "but it must get a bit annoying."

"Fuck yeah. I can't even piss without an escort."

She turns her head, her cheek warm on his skin. "Sounds like a story."

He waves a hand into the air above them. "I got photographed peeing too indiscriminately for their tastes, I got a talking to, end of story."

She turns back with a snort. "Good story."

"I know, right?" He takes another drink. There's silence for a long, okay moment, then—

"So you've some scenes with her you weren't expecting, is that it?"

His eyes close involuntarily. He hadn't given her any explanation, just shown up and fucked her, hard, on all fours. Then once they'd finished—and yes, she'd come, twice actually—he'd started drinking.

He'd given her nothing, really.

"Yeah," he finally says hoarsely. "Something like that."

"Kirk finally getting shagged and she's the lucky girl? That'd be a bloody nightmare, for sure."

He laughs outright. It tastes bitter. "No. No, it's just… We're just going to be working together very closely. More than last time."

"I see." She turns again, her whole body this time, and he feels her lips leave a soft kiss on his shoulder-blade. "I'm sorry," she murmurs, and her breath spreads tingles across his skin.

And she really is, and he can tell from the feel of her mouth and the look in her eye as she rolls him onto and into her again, and that's what he fucking needs, and no one else seems to be able to give it to him.

So he takes what she's offering. And he tries not to think about it.

\---

He’s having his coffee, cig, and _Times_ on his porch a week or so later when he sees it. Sees _her_ , sepia-toned on the flimsy newsprint, muffled by a dreary costume, and washed out by stage lights— but her nonetheless.

And okay, so he had been wrong. So totally, utterly wrong that he has to laugh at himself. At the situation. At everything. You have to laugh at yourself, he'd heard once, because you'd cry your eyes out if you didn't.

He stares at it, at this half-page ad in the Entertainment section, for an opera called _Peter Grimes_. The composer’s name is vaguely familiar, and he searches his brain for a minute before remembering— College. Stephen. Stephen who had gone on and on about queer pride and queer history and queer role-models, and Chris isn’t exactly one for opera or parades but Stephen had let him fuck him up against the shower wall every morning so he put up with it. And it had been educational; not only does he know way more about gay artists of the early 20th century than he would otherwise, but he knows how to give excellent fellatio.

But he’d by lying if he said the day Stephen tearfully confessed to having become ensconced with Steven (more poetry) had left him torn up inside. They parted amicably and have kept in touch.

Chris smirks and considers calling him. Then he’d at least not be going to the opera alone.

Because he’s most definitely going.

He gets out his phone to call the box office, a grin spreading across his face. He can't wait to see her face.

\---

It's odd, he thinks; it's sort of like normal theater, of course it is, with the lights and the squeaky seats and the smell of perfume and expendable income. But it's also different. The patrons walk a little differently, and most definitely dress differently. The playbill is thicker, with more pimping of other music-related events, and the ads are certainly different—wines and chocolates and conservatories and all sorts of shit.

Ten minutes to curtain, he's bored of people-watching (as his mother calls it), so he looks more thoroughly at said playbill, internally mocking the glossy headshots and preponderance of college degrees— until he sees her equally-glossy smile and stops to read her bio.

He has to read it twice. Three times. Then he’s just staring at it, his eyes unfocused and his brain at full stop.

He’d like to think he’s not a dumb guy, but he’s been fucking _had._

 _Jessica Painter,_ it reads, _was born to and raised by musicians in Tigard, Oregon. She did her undergraduate at Oregon State before going on to USC to study under Margaret Myles._

There's more, roles she's done and cities she's toured. But it's just a blur to him. And when the houselights do finally drop, he is not prepared. He doesn’t really catch most of the prologue—it’s jarring music, jarring having to look at the supertitles, jarring for him to be readjusting his whole image of a person he felt like he'd known so well.

The funniest part is—not funny-ha-ha, but funny-grandma's-not-coming-back—is that really, when he thinks about it, he's not angry. She has every right to be cautious with a fucking movie star—pun intended—and he clearly didn't need her real credentials to enjoy her company.

Clearly.

Luckily, before that line of thought can coalesce into any serious revelations, he finds himself getting sucked into the story playing out before him.

And shit, she _is_ good. Chris is no classical musician, but the music is strange and difficult (he could swear at one point she and the title character are in two different keys) and the character is immensely opposite to Jessica's actual personality. She positively nails it, all of it, and his respect for her rockets.

She's a natural performer, he thinks sardonically. He has to suppress a laugh.

Chris buys an overpriced froofy beer at intermission and tries not to think. Afterwards, he knows, he should just go home. But he also knows he's not going to.

 _I live alone_ , the estranged leading man had said. _The habit grows._

\---

All he has to do is smile at the right usher, and she blushes and tells him exactly where the correct stage door is. As these things are, it's off an alley, darkish but mostly clean, with a taxi bank a hundred feet away around a corner.

He doesn't have to wait long before Jessica is there. She’s still got the teacher-hair, but she's scrubbed off the makeup. She looks, he thinks, tired. He sympathizes.

She’s tucking her bag over her shoulder when she sees him, and her hand freezes, clutching the strap.

He waves the handbill once. Maybe twice. “Now I know where you live,” he says, not smiling.

She chews on the words before answering. “Yup. Every day except Mondays.”

The vowels are rich, American. She isn’t trying to dissemble, and he appreciates that, especially now knowing they’re both in the dissembly business.

“Did you enjoy the show?” she asks, and the layers aren’t really like layers; they’re more like drops of oil in a vast dark water.

“It wasn’t what I was expecting, but yeah. I did.”

She looks at him. “I wasn’t the only one pretending, was I?”

He clenches his jaw against the urge to sag, to shrink. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She moves off the wall, clasps his face in both her hands. Leans close enough that he very nearly reaches out for her. But she doesn’t kiss him. Her breath skates along his lips, the vowels once again tangy, foreign, soothing: “Come on, then. I’ll show you.”

\---

She’s on him as soon as they’re in the door. With whatever shoes she has on, she’s startlingly close to his height, and she not-so-gently pushes him against the wall and kisses him. "Listen, Mr. Pine," she whispers into his ear, accent thick as it ever was, as she divests him of his jacket and begins to make quick work of his shirt buttons, "I may not be the smartest person around, but I'm certainly not the dumbest."

He tries to say something as he shrugs off his shirt, but she kisses him instead and he's not trying very hard anyways— She still feels safe to him, somehow, even as she's leading him over this cliff. His body feels the inevitability, at any rate, so he heeds his instincts and shuts the hell up.

"And you must've realized that you give out all these hints, these—" She lets out an impatient noise and takes his wrist and guides his hand under her skirt and panties, to where she is wet and warm, oh so warm, and angles her hips up until the tip of his finger has slipped into her. She catches his gaze purposefully, and probably seeing way too much. "You don't need one of these to let me inside of you."

"Fuck," he groans, and he can't help but push in a little. Her teeth flash at him in a wicked sort of smile, and he feels her inner muscles flex closely around him. He curses again, then brings his finger up to tease her clit in retaliation. She groans and captures his lips, moving her hips against his hand in a tight circle.

He loves the heat of it, the slickness and the way she's breathing delicious sounds into his mouth, but far too soon she pulls his hand off and out, shaking her head. "This isn't about me." She kisses his fingers, slowly, savoring the taste, an act that never fucking fails to make him hard. "This is about how you're covered in his marks, whether you see it or not."

Before he can protest, she presses her lips to his, sweeping her tongue against his as she undoes his pants. "From head…" She pushes them and his boxers down his thighs, then kneels down to mark their path with her mouth. "To toe."

She coaxes him out of the rest of his clothing quickly while she's there, shoes and boxers and socks and pants making a hasty pile next to the door, and he exhales as she kisses her way back up. "And especially here…" She licks once at his cock then sucks it into her mouth for just a moment, and his hand slides around to cup her head.

Then she straightens, replacing her mouth with her hand, and presses a kiss right over his heart. She leaves her free hand on the spot as she meets his gaze. "And there."

Her hand is working his cock effortlessly and her eyes are picking too fucking close to the bone so he pulls her to him, nudging them both toward the bed as he plunges his tongue into her mouth deeply, desperately exploring every crevice. His hands push into her hair, carelessly dropping every pin he encounters until it flows messily down past her shoulders.

Distracted, he breaks the kiss and buries his nose in the piles of girliness, smelling stage lights and hairspray and lavender. Then he curses lowly as she speeds up her motions and his hips reflexively thrusts into her fist. "Wait, I don't want to—"

She shuts up him with a hard kiss, her own tongue having a thorough go at his mouth, and guides him down to the bed until he's laid out, naked, and she's fully clothed and rising above him like a valkyrie. He nearly chuckles at the unintentional opera reference, but then she descends upon him and it's all over but the crying.

"It's not that anyone could blame you," she murmurs, her mouth on his jaw and the words soft, languid, yet steel-truth at the core. "He's a hell of a good-looking guy. Those dimples." She presses a kiss just north and east of his mouth. "That neck." Makes a trail down to his Adam's apple and beyond. "Those broad shoulders." Her hands sweep his chest as her tongue licks at his collarbone. "Is he that tan everywhere, you think?" Her mouth closes over his nipple, teeth tugging just enough to set his spine on fire.

Chris closes his eyes and swallows convulsively. "Yes," he says hoarsely.

"Ah." She licks a path downwards, nibbling on each rib in turn, and he can't help the way his body responds, almost jerking into her. Then she reaches his hipbone and he tightens his hands in her hair. "So you've seen." She sucks down the line between muscles and he positively does jerk into her then, so she splays her hands along his hips to hold him steady. Anchor him. He's pathetically grateful.

He has to swallow again as she works her way down. "Yeah, but not—" He sucks in a breath as she nuzzles one of his balls into her mouth. "Shit. Not touched. Seen but not touched and don't you dare stop."

She doesn't; after a moment of working at it she shifts to the other one, and the continued tongue bath rolls into a wave of pleasure so fucking awesome that he only manages a minor protest when she removes her mouth and rolls his sac gently in her hand.

"It's okay, you know."

The wave wanes. He looks down at her, his brows pulled together. "What is?"

"To be thinking of him right now."

His stomach drops out. "I wasn't, I swear to God, I—"

But she's moving quickly up the bed to swallow the rest with a kiss. "I know, baby." There's a smile on her lips and in her eyes and she kisses him again, touching her tongue to his sweetly, lingeringly. His gut slowly crawls slowly back into place. "Consider this a free pass, then?"

He searches her face and thinks about protesting. He should, on principle.

But he doesn't.

"Good," she says, her hand resuming its motion on his balls. She lowers her mouth to his chest, sucking on his nipples, licking the muscles on his belly, and he's so involved in the warmth she's generating there that he almost doesn't notice her finger slide smoothly down his perineum to his asshole.

Almost.

It takes him about a half a second to decide whether or not to go with it. Then he murmurs his approval, his heart pounding and his cock hard as sin, and lifts one knee.

She looks up at him, resting her pointy chin lightly on his stomach, and her eyes are so blue they're nearly clear. Without speaking, she breaches him with one finger and he licks his lips, adjusting to the sensation. It's been years. And, he's pleased to discover, it's still awesome.

He meets her eyes again. "Do you have anything?"

She crooks her finger and he curses. His body is fucking lapping it up. "Stop thinking," she says quietly as she moves gently but firmly out and back in again. He tries not to writhe like a fucking girl, but it's a tough fight. It just feels so fucking nice, all those nerve endings singing freedom... "Just go with it. In fact—" She pulls all the way out and leans up to kiss him. "Turn over."

"Shit," he bites out, then sucks at her mouth, feeling kind of dizzy.

A happy noise escapes her at his insistent kisses and she clutches at his torso. "I mean it, Pine," she finally hisses into his mouth, and the _accent_ , the way that vowel sounds just like—goddamnit— "Turn the fuck over."

"Hang on." He kisses along her jaw line, ending by defiantly sucking a mark into the skin of her neck. She makes a squeaking noise and he smiles, then she shoves at him and he tucks and rolls.

Her hands pull on his hips before he can flop down fully. "Nuh-uh. Up."

"Shit," he mumbles into his forearm as he gets himself onto all fours; he can hear her taking off her clothes so he just lets it lie for a moment, occasionally reaching down to stroke his cock. "It's been a while, okay, and I don't even know how you knew that—knew any of this to start with, but for the record, I was usually the one giving, not—"

Slick fingers push inside of him with no preamble, two this time, and he curses at the burn of pleasure. She settles herself over him, and it's finally hot skin on hot skin, and they both exhale.

Then she speaks again. "But you don't when you think of him, do you?" Her fingers slide in and out and fuck, she knows what she's doing, and that's almost too weird for Chris but then she leans in and bites at his shoulder. "You'd let him do this."

Shit, as if he's thought of anything else for the last month while in the shower with his hand around his cock. "Fuck yeah, I would."

"You'd bloody _beg_ him to do this." She adds a finger, and he can't not arch his back, press into it. The need to touch himself is so strong his hands clench convulsively into the sheets. She pushes at his shoulderblade with her chin. "Go on."

Finally having the permission he didn't realize he was waiting for, he strokes himself gratefully, savagely, aware he's close to coming, aware that this is oh so fucking wrong but also aware he wants it and isn't going to stop it. Fuck, he's an asshole. A degenerate. A desperate, pathetic victim of star-crossed love. Pardoning the pun.

But she keeps _talking_ , in that fucking _accent_ , and it makes his toes curl embarrassingly as his cock jumps in his hand. "You want him on you, and in you. You want to watch his expression as he comes, knowing he's there with you, for you—those huge eyes—those lips—"

And fuck if her words aren't magic, because suddenly _his_ face is everywhere in his mind— He can almost picture it _being him_ , imagine it's _his_ breath ghosting his neck, _his_ skin slick against his back, _his_ fingers relentlessly assaulting his prostate until the base of his spine starts to tingle and his balls gather. "Fuck, I’m gonna— _fuck_ —"

"That's alright, baby, let it happen," she murmurs. "For him." She slams home again, and that's it, see ya, out of the ballpark. "Come for him."

Lightning hot pleasure vaults from his ass to his balls to his cock. "Yeah—fuck—" He chokes out the last sound as the orgasm overtakes him and he spills all over his own shaking hand. " _Karl_ —"

\---

When the curtain rises again, only the overly sumptuous hotel pillow greets his one-eyed gaze. He blinks, then everything floods back to him and he buries his face in the fluffiness.

He hears her chuckle. "Nice try."

He lets out something between a growl and a whimper, rolling over with his eyes squinched shut until he finds her warm body and burrows into her side. "What time is it?"

"Late." Her hand is soft in his hair. "Do you have an early call tomorrow?"

She's lost the accent, assumedly for good this time. He tries to ignore the twist in his gut. "Today, you mean? No, I don't. I have a press thing way later, but that's it."

"Good. We should probably…"

"Oh god," he groans, "talk?"

"Well, I was going to say drink, but okay. We can talk."

At this, he finally opens his eyes. Her hair is a total mess and there are smudges under her eyes from trod-upon eye makeup, but she's naked and tucked in and reading and it makes him smile.

"Still haven't finished that book?" He gestures to the cover.

"I know, right? Silly of me to have a job and a life. And like four other books going at the moment."

"I know how that goes. Took me two fucking years to read _Atlas Shrugged_."

"Christ, what a tome."

"Truth."

She saves the page, closes the book, and sets in on the bedside table. Then she scootches down under the covers so they're lying face to face. "Hi," she says softly.

"Hey there."

"How you feeling?"

"I'm feeling awful."

She reaches over to run her hand over his side, then slides the arm around him gently. Their legs tangle comfortably. "I know, hon. Heartbreak does that to people."

He grimaces. "No, I mean for—" He waves his hand. "Treating you like a substitute. It's a douche move."

A corner of her mouth turns up and she regards him with a little bit of awe. "Even with my full permission and encouragement, you still call it a douche move? Damn, boy, somebody raised you right."

He snorts. She's right, but still. "I'll be sure to thank her for you. Although forgive me if I don't give her details."

She kisses him lightly, grinning. "That's fine. And if she ever wants to go to the opera, call me."

"It's a deal."

"Toast?"

"Fuck yeah."

\---

It's kind of like drunken twenty questions, or maybe truth or dare minus the dares plus a mini-bar, as they lay there lazy and naked on the vast hotel bed. One of them asks a question ("Was Lindsay Lohan on cocaine the whole time?") and they drink; the question is answered ("Except Tuesday mornings, don't ask, I have no idea.") and they drink.

“Why wouldn’t you tell me you’re an opera singer? Especially given that the way you didn’t say it, you made it seem like you were a stripper.”

She almost snorts her drink through her nose. “Oh fuck me running. That’s hilarious.” She wipes her mouth. “No, I just— Would you have said? If you were me?”

Chris shakes his head. “That’s an impossible question to answer, and you know it. Quit being evasive.”

She pulls a face. “Okay, okay, I pussed out. Normal people are not impressed by my job, so I don’t talk about it unless asked.”

“I asked.”

“You’re you.”

“That I am.”

“I assumed.”

“That you did.”

“Was I wrong?”

He shrugs. “It would have made your choice of drinks at the hotel more logical.”

“But.”

“But you were probably not wrong, no.”

“This is what I’m saying. I realize most people’s attitudes about opera range somewhere between tepid dislike to outright hatred, so I made an educated guess.” She takes another drink, and almost smirks. “It’s okay. I hate it sometimes too.”

This surprises him. “Really?”

She gives him a pointed look. “You don’t love every movie ever made, do you?”

He snorts. “’Hell, I don’t even love every movie _I’ve_ ever made.”

“But…” she prompts.

“It’s a job.”

“It’s a job that you don’t hate.”

“It’s a job that I love, most days.”

“Two of a kind, then.” She holds her hand up for a high five, which he returns.

Then he drinks, contemplating. “Although _Peter Grimes_ was fucking amazing.”

“Ugh, I know, right? I’ve been in love with that show for years. Britten’s first, too. Out of the gate with a bang.”

“Sure you don’t mean out of the _closet_ with a bang?”

She shakes her head, her eyebrows squinched together. “No, he swore his whole life the opera wasn’t about homosexuality.”

“What? How? I mean, why?”

“It was the mid twentieth century, dude. That show premiered like six months after World War II ended, and England was not a happy place at that point in many, many ways.”

“True, but—“

“But what?” She moves and suddenly she’s on top of him, holding him down with both her gaze and her body. “Are you going to give some lofty lecture on being true to yourself no matter surrounding adversity blahdy blahdy blahdy? Because if you are, I swear to _God_ I will tickle you to death for blatant hypocrisy.”

He feels himself flushing, and can't help but laugh. “Point.”

“I might tickle you to death anyways.”

“By all means.” He grins up at her, and it only seems natural that the drinks get put on the nightstand and they get distracted pretty thoroughly for a while.

\---

Once they've got a battalion of tiny empty bottles lined up on the sideboard, it finally veers where it's been headed all along. "Where the hell did you get the lube?" he ventures with a wry grin.

She blushes, actually blushes, which he finds incredibly endearing for someone who had had her fingers unrepentantly up his ass a mere few hours prior. "Um, I always have some in my purse?" He raises an eyebrow and she punches him lightly on the arm, nearly unsettling her drink in the process. "Hey, you never know!"

"Point conceded," he says with a small smile. "And the whole Chuy thing?"

She looks at him, confused for a second, then comprehension dawns. "Oh, that—He—Well… I have a tendency to slip into accents when I'm drunk? And I've known him since undergrad; he was in a fraternity and I was in a sorority, so. He's seen it more than a few times."

"Ah." Silence descends for a moment, and he doesn't have to ask the next question.

"I didn't want to be that pathetic girl that jumps on you," she says simply. "Slipping into an accent is a defense mechanism I've perfected over the years. Mostly that one and mostly when it involves male strangers." She shrugs. "I'm sure a therapist could tell me why, but it has yet to bite me in the ass."

He snerks. "Had an affect on _my_ ass, though."

She groans and hits him with a pillow. "Minus ten points, Pine."

"You left the door _wide_ open for me, Painter."

"Maybe," she concedes, tucking the pillow under her chin again. She swirls her drink; the pause lingers. "Is it my turn now?"

He doesn't answer right away. She takes this as an affirmative but doesn't press him, just rolls onto her side, head propped in hand, to wait.

"He knows," he starts, his voice flat. "He's probably always known, because we've always had this—" He tries to think of eloquent words, but gives up and uses the shitty ones. "We've always been us. Heavy looks, electric touches, nervous laughter, all the shit from romance novels only with dicks and zero hope for a happy ending." He takes a drink, unready to peel off the rest of the band-aid.

She leans down to put her drink on the floor, then reaches over and lays her hand on his arm lightly. She doesn't say anything, though. She's just there, warm and real and patient.

"He finished a big project recently, so he's gone home for a long break, a couple months probably; there's something filming there he's doing—Anyways, so Zach threw this gigantic going-away party, as Zach does— They're hella fun, not gonna lie, and this was no exception. He rented out this ridiculous saloon-themed bar, and tried to make us dress up but come on, does it get gayer than that?"

She raises an eyebrow. "Should I make the Village People joke now or later?"

"Never, thank you. Talk about minus ten points."

"I do what I can."

"And where would the world be without you."

"Clearly in shambles."

"Clearly."

"But you're not going to distract me from the cowboys."

He sighs, puts his drink beside hers, and rolls onto his back. The ceiling is flawless, but he stares at it anyways.

"The closest we got to costumes was plaid shirts—"

"Oo, the red one?"

He turns to look at her sharply. She shrugs. "I'm not blind, nor am I a hermit. Plus red's my favorite color. It's a good shirt."

He looks at her for a moment longer. "I can't blame you, I guess. Fucking vultures with cameras are everywhere."

"And there's nothing you can do about it. So let's go back to talking about Karl in a cowboy outfit."

He snorts and turns back to the ceiling. "His shirt was blue plaid. White and blue with the top two buttons undone like a damn porn star and I really shouldn't remember it so clearly." He rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands.

Then he feels her curl up next to him, her hand coming to rest on his stomach. "Easy, partner."

He kisses the top of her head. "Easy, indeed."

\---

So maybe they'd had too much PBR and low-shelf whiskey ("Well, come on now," Zach had protested, "I want it to be authentic. Ish."). And maybe pool wasn't the _best_ idea, what with all the bending over and looks of concentration and that sharp crack of colliding balls.

Drunk Chris was Visceral Chris, and he noted all these things with all of his senses, feeling like he was on the hunt. Like he was sly.

…which of course he wasn't ('Drunk is feeling sophisticated when you can't say it,' he'd read somewhere), but they were in a corner of the place, and it was crowded and no one was paying attention. So he kept right on noting: the way smooth skin and dark hair was purposefully but somehow classily exposed by the two miscreant shirt-buttons; the way jeans hugged ass subtly but efficiently when he leaned over to line up a shot.

A really bad shot, Chris noted. Karl was not the best at pool, and it was one of Chris' favorite Berkeley past times so he was above-average. "Hey, hang on. What have I been telling you?"

Karl didn't stand, just dropped his head in exasperation. Then he looked up, one of those pseudo-scowls on his face, and Chris' drunk-ass heart kicked when their eyes met. "When all else fails, fuck the other guy?"

"Well, yeah, that too, but no, look." He kissed his sanity goodbye and positioned himself behind, on top of, beside Karl, to show him how to get the cue pointed low on the cue ball correctly. And shit if their bodies didn't jump with electricity when they came into contact. Pool forgotten, they held perfectly still, unable to breathe and—at least in Chris' case—think.

Then Karl cleared his throat, turning his chin the littlest bit towards him. "Like this?" he asked, his voice low and smooth and shit, Chris was kind of glad he was drunk enough to not get hard from just that, but there was a chance of it in the forecast if Karl moved even one inch—

Which Karl went and fucking did. Chris sucked in a breath. "Karl—"

"Don't be such a pansy bottom, Urban!" Zach's catcall cut straight across the room, the crowd, the noise, the bubble they'd been in, and the tension snapped so suddenly that Chris reeled back. Karl was up like a pistol, around the table and bending over another shot. Which he missed, and badly, but he just laughed like it was fine. Like everything was fine.

And when Chris met his gaze, it was clear he was begging Chris to pretend the same.

Well, _fuck_ that.

"Hey, Pine, you can't leave yet, we're going to drink out of a boot here in—"

"I'm just going for a smoke," he managed, feeling his jaw tic.

"Oh." Zach waved him off. Chris didn't let the door hit him on the way out.

\---

He had a cigarette lit and had paced most of the way down the alley when he heard the door open again. He stiffened, but didn't turn. Whoever it was, maybe they'd leave him the fuck alone.

"Chris…"

Or not.

He didn't turn. "Go back inside, Karl."

"I will. In a minute." He walked up to stand companionably beside Chris. "Got another?"

He clenched his jaw and opened the pack. The air between them popped as their fingers brushed. He clenched his jaw harder, against the tide of emotion rising up in his throat.

"Thanks."

It was a lost cause, though. His eyes were simply drawn to Karl's face. He watched the burst of flame in the dark alley, watched as the glow appeared at the end of the cig and with the click of the lighter became the only light. Then he was just left watching Karl's carefully neutral expression.

"I could make you happy, you know," he heard himself say, apropos of nothing. The words just tumbled out on a wave of hurt and alcohol and he'd wish them back but fuck that, too. You only got one chance at this shit, right? And the guy was leaving the country. Leaving to return to his wife and children, Chris forcibly reminded himself. "…if you weren't already."

Karl took a drag, a slow, Karl-like drag, and Chris watched that too. Then he turned his head to look Chris straight in the eye. The pain that burned there reached out and hit Chris between the eyes. The want, the hurt, the vain awareness—The air froze in Chris' lungs.

And then Karl spoke. "You think I don't know that?"

And the freezing expanded, spread to his gut and his arms and his thighs and his heart until he was drowning in cold, drowning in knowing exactly what he could never have.

He had to get the hell out.

He dropped his cig and ground it savagely under his heel. "Fuck you."

\---

"And I left. He just stood there, smoking, and I went back in, said goodnight to Zach, and left."

His eyes feel dry. He rubs them again, then hears a sniff. He puts a finger under her chin to tilt up her head, and is aghast to see a bright wet sheen on her eyes. "Why are _you_ crying?"

She ducks her head, wiping her cheeks. "It's just so fucking tragic. Time, space, the great mystery of fate, I get worked up about shit like this." Then she looks back up at him. She reaches up to trace his lips with her finger, then cups his cheek. "Plus I know what it's like to know that the reason you love someone—their core character, their pure upstanding _goodness_ —is the same reason you can't be with them."

His mouth curls bitterly with the truth of it. "Yup. Sucks the big one."

She laughs at the understatement, kisses him lightly, then moves away, but only to pull the covers over them and turn out the light. "Come here," she says softly, her hand running down his chest. "Let me help you forget about it for just a little bit longer."

\---

Time, Chris has always felt, is rather elastic. He's got a long diatribe about it in one of his notebooks, but fuck if he can remember which one, and it's all a rambly way of saying the same thing—Time does _not_ fly when you're having fun. It flies whenever it damn well feels like it.

And before he knows it, his latest job is wrapping and he's realizing with a jolt that Karl's been gone nearly two months. They've exchanged polite conversation since he left, mostly over text or email and wholly about work. They cling to it tenaciously. As it's all they've got left.

\---

His phone wakes up him up on his second day off after wrap. He opens one eye just enough to see who it is, then closes it again to answer. "You'd better have a good excuse for interrupting my beauty sleep, Ms. Painter."

"Are you alright?"

She sounds overly concerned. He cracks his eye open again. “What?”

"I said, are you alright?"

"No, I heard you, but I'm confused. Why wouldn't I be alright?"

She makes a noise. “You really _don’t_ read the tabloids, do you?”

“No.”

“Well. Go Google Karl Urban.”

“Why? I’m really not in the mood for self-flagell—“

“Oh, for the love of—Chris, they’re divorcing.”

The phone slips from his fingers.

\---

Then the elastic goes the other way again, stretches out like fucking molasses, or the taffy they sell on the promenade, or something else sugary and easily metaphorical. Chris thinks often, fleetingly, that nicotine and Jessica are the only things keeping him from becoming an alcoholic. Or, at the very least, a religious zealot.

It finally snaps back the night before the first read through, making the sleepless hours go by far too quickly for Chris' tastes. And of course he finally gets to sleep about an hour before the alarm goes off, so he presses snooze too many times and is very nearly late. Fucking figures.

\---

"Did somebody get dressed in the dark again? Or is this a morning-after combo?" Zach looks him up and down, tsking.

"Shut it, princess," Chris grumbles as he sits down in the adjacent chair. He's totally not glancing around the room for signs of Karl. Not at all. "It's neither."

Zach regards him carefully, and for way too long. "Oh, Pine," he sighs sagely.

"Knock it off. You're not Tia Dalma."

"Please, I do not need voodoo to see that you are, pardon the pun, pining."

"Nice alliteration. Now shut up, before he—" The door swings in and he hears Karl and John's mingled laughter. "—gets here."

"Too late," Zach sing-songs sotto voce.

"I hate you."

"I know."

\---

An hour and a half later they're finally granted their first break. Withdrawal is hammering through Chris' veins and he practically sprints out the back entrance into the parking lot and the designated area.

Three puffs into it, the door opens. "Ah, Zoe, I was wondering when you'd—" He stops abruptly when he sees who it is.

"Not Zoe," Karl drawls, pulling out his own cigarette and lighting up.

"So I noticed."

He lets out a long, slow stream of smoke, and Chris wants to kiss him so badly he has to press his lips together.

"It's going to be a good shoot," Karl says casually.

"Yeah, it is," Chris says back, just as casually.

Then he sees the muscle in Karl's jaw tic, and is contemplating what that would feel like under his mouth when he realizes Karl's talking.

"You know that scene," he's saying, not looking at Chris, "in _When Harry Met Sally_ where the one guy goes, 'Marriages don't break up on account of infidelity. It's just a symptom that something else is wrong,' and Harry goes…"

Chris speaks without thinking. "…'Well, that symptom is fucking my wife.' Yeah, of course I know it, I did that scene once in college for a —" His mouth snaps shut as the connection sparks. "Oh. Oh shit."

"How's that for irony." It's not a question, and Chris doesn't even correct his word usage, because that's something Quinto would do, even at a moment like this, and he's not Quinto, not even close, so instead he stands there dumbly, the cigarette smoking two inches from his mouth as he tries to think of something that sounds like anything worth saying. And he suddenly realizes _why_ Quinto says shit like that—there's nothing else to fucking say.

He eventually settles for anything in English. "Sorry, man." He manages to stop himself from wincing, but it's close. He takes a drag to cover it up, then notices his hand is unsteady. Fucking pathetic. "Do you… wanna talk about it?"

Karl looks at him then, his face a mixture of pity, disbelief, and sadness. "That would be kind of crude, don't you think?"

"I just figured I should offer."

Karl takes a drag. Then his jaw tics again, and this time Chris is prepared. Sort of. "She started seeing someone, too, figuring, I don't know, that it would balance out that way."

Crude or not, he has to protest. "But we weren't even—"

"Didn't matter. She knew."

Chris has nothing to say to that.

"So anyway, then she fell for him." He taps ash off his cigarette, and they both watch it waft to the ground. "It's alright, really. I mean, he's a good guy, an old friend. The boys love him."

The pain in his voice levels Chris. "You'll have them here for holidays."

He exhales. "Maybe."

"You will."

"It's a rough thing, to jump across the globe for a week when you're a kid."

"It's rough when you're a grown-up. I don't care. You deserve to see your kids, and they fucking deserve to see you. Karl." He waits until Karl looks up, looks at _him_. "I can make myself scarce while they're here."

There are a world of things unsaid swirling in the cigarette smoke between them.

"That's some pretty big assumptions you're making there, mate."

Chris, heart absofuckinglutely pounding, holds his gaze. "Tell me I'm wrong."

After an endless moment, Karl breaks, his eyes slipping to Chris' lips for just a moment before settling on a point vaguely off to the side. "You're not wrong."

"But."

Karl looks stretched, thin, aching; Chris can practically see the pulse beating in his neck. "I need time."

Chris stills, feels seconds tick by, then nods slowly, feeling the muscles in his neck, feeling like a marionette. "Time. Sure. Right." He calmly, very calmly drops the butt into the canister and heads towards the door.

"Chris—"

"See you inside."

\---

"I was a douche," he admits to her.

They're in a booth this time, and the hotel's not their usual, but the routine won't be their usual, not now that Karl is back and… well, sort of Chris'. Chris' on layaway. Maybe.

"To whom?"

"Who do you think? Sheesh."

"Right. What happened?"

Chris picks at his steak. "He says he needs time."

"Of course he does."

"So I'm…. giving him time."

"Well, stop it."

"Stop it."

"You heard me."

"Yeah, I heard you, but no, listen, he's not a girl, so when he says he needs time, he doesn't mean he secretly wants me to leave him love letters or buy him chocolates—"

"Oh my god you can be such a prick."

"Dude, girls are—"

"Crazy, I know, trust me, but in this instance, you are proving the other half of that saying, which is that boys are—"

"How am I being dumb? He said—"

"Baby." The endearment stops him short. She puts her hand on his lightly.

"Yeah," he mumbles reluctantly.

"Listen to me."

He sighs. "If I must."

"I know you're hurt as shit that he didn't immediately jump into your arms."

"I'm not—"

"Christopher."

"…right."

"But. Forget that for a minute, because this isn't about you. This is about _him_."

Chris winces. The truth fucking stings.

"His life just went down the shitter."

"I know."

"You know him better than anyone."

"Arguably, but sometimes—"

"No, Chris, now is not the time for insecurities. He needs you."

"He needs time."

"He needs you and he needs time."

"I don't understand."

"I know, hon."

"I kind of want to kill you right now."

She laughs, tinklingly. "I know that too."

He gesticulates semi-threateningly with his steak knife. "Elucidate, woman."

She glances around the room, then leans in and whispers, like they're spies and it's in black & white. "I have a plan."

\---

"This is your plan?"

"Yes."

"Ralph's is your plan."

"Yes."

"Your plan sucks."

"Shut it, Thomas, and witness my magic."

"My name isn't—" He stops. "Oh. Oh sure, Biblical references while we're in front of a wall of liquor. Classy."

"I am amazing." She puts her hand to her mouth, considering. "Brandy, you think?"

"You're not serious."

"Of course I am. Everybody likes liquor. Divorcees like lots of liquor. And geeks like brandy."

That makes him grin. "He is a geek, isn't he?"

"Geek in the body of a god."

"Amen. Brandy it is, then."

\---

Two days later, Chris opens his door to a messenger holding the same package he'd had sent to Karl the day before. His gut clenches.

"You're supposed to open it, sir."

His brows furrow, but Chris does as ordered. Then a grin steals across his face.

The bottle is empty, and the piece of paper he'd sent--

 _Because even geeks need to get out of their heads from time to time. – C_

—has something scribbled below:

 _Whoever it is that gave you this idea, Pine, thank her for me. – K_

He tips the messenger way more than is kosher.

\---

"He said that?" she crows, delighted, over her tofu and twig salad that afternoon. "I win at everything!"

"Yes, yes, you're very good." He's grinning too, though. "What next, Cruella?"

She smiles, and it's not a little bit devious. "Oh, next we go for the kill."

\---

She's turning off the engine in front of something that looks suspiciously like a pet-store when he catches on to her master plan. "Oh hell no. We are not getting him a—an anything that you could get here."

She huffs at him in a startlingly mom-like manner. "Have I led you astray yet, Pine?"

"No, but—"

"No buts. Everybody loves cute fluffy things, and people who won't admit that they like cute fluffy things can instead bond over their manly dislike of cute fluffy things. Everybody wins. And if he doesn't want it, I love cats, and mine wouldn't mind the company."

He smirks. "You're so going to turn into one of those old ladies with a million—"

"Shut the fuck up, you ungrateful bastard, and get out of the car."

The smirk turns into a smile. "Yes ma'am." Then he grabs at her arm and pulls her back down into the seat. "One condition."

She rolls her eyes. "Yes?"

"We name him Captain Fine."

She grins. "Master of the Universe?"

"How did you know?"

\---

But the messenger doesn't come back the next day. Or the one after that. Time stretches out again, stuck with little pieces of the detritus of life. They're all stamped 'Karl,' though.

\---

Somebody knocks on his door way too early the following Saturday morning. He'd been up late drinking with high school friends, so he pulls the pillow over his head and hopes whoever it is goes the fuck away.

Then he hears his phone ping. He squints at it.

It's a text from Karl.

 _Open up, you layabout._

"Fucking Christ," Chris mutters to himself as he rolls out of bed and stumbles around his apartment. Mouthwash. Shirt. Door.

Karl.

Karl standing there with a kitten. A kitten that looks scared out of its wits.

"You're an idiot," Karl says without preamble.

"Hello to you too."

"Have you brushed your teeth?"

"Sure. What the—"

But Karl's kissing him. Karl's kissing him _thoroughly_ , and they're standing in the goddamn doorway, and the kitten makes a tiny pathetic sound from between them.

"Karl," he tries to say, but Karl just keeps kissing him, delving in deeply and intentionally. And what with the effect it's having on his brain and his cock, Chris is having trouble caring about anything else.

He brings his hands up to hold Karl in place so he can start reciprocating, sweeping his tongue into all those places he's been dreaming about for years, and it turns out they taste like mint and cigarettes, and Karl makes this fucking fantastic noise in the back of his throat when he—

The kitten mewls again, more insistently.

"Shit. Karl…"

"Yeah, yeah." Karl heeds it this time, disentangling them, and Chris has to swallow against the urge to recapture the hot breath that splays out over his chin. Then their eyes meet.

Chris' heart jumps into his throat. Karl looks good, tan and stoic, but Chris can see the circles under his eyes and the wrinkles above. See the slightly haunted look that's still so obvious. At least to Chris.

He knows what he should say. Fuck if he can say it, though.

"Can I—" Karl indicates inside with his chin and the moment's gone.

Chris steps aside. "Yeah, totally, I bought stuff, in case you didn't want him." He closes the door behind them and watches Karl crouch down to put the cat on the floor. He pats it on the head once and straightens, a corner of his mouth turned up.

Before Chris can ask, he's getting kissed again. Which would normally be just fucking fine—But they need to figure some shit out first. He puts his hands on Karl's shoulders and digs in.

Karl ends the kiss, but doesn't pull away. "Her," he says into Chris' lips. "It's a her."

Chris tries to track but he's a little fuzzy—which might possibly be due to Karl's lips sliding down his jaw— "Liz said it was a boy."

"Who's Liz?" It's little more than a murmur at his ear, below which Karl's teeth and tongue are having a field day. Oh god, that's a fucking hand sliding into his boxers, too.

" _Fuck_ — The—the girl at the pet store… _Karl_..." Chris finally gathers up enough wits to grab the back of Karl's neck and bring them face to face. "I thought you needed time."

The hand stills, then retreats. Karl's eyes narrow, and he looks for a long moment at Chris' lips before returning to meet his gaze. His soul is in his eyes, though, as ever, and Chris' heart kicks in his chest. "I do."

"You do."

"Yes. But I need—" He falters. He leans forward and his mouth brushes Chris' bottom lip lightly, almost reverently.

"You need time and you need me," Chris breathes out, and when Karl nods, a little helplessly, Chris is on him like a shot.

He frames Karl's face with his hands again so he can capture his lips in a bruising, ridiculously lush kiss, then scrabbles one hand down Karl's fucking amazing shoulders to his waist, in order to tuck under and ruck up his shirt and propel them towards the bedroom at the same time.

"Hang on, careful," Karl protests just before Chris flings his shirt somewhere, anywhere.

"What?"

"Kitten." He kisses Chris once more than shoves him down the hallway. "Just— keep an eye out."

"Alright, alright."

And time begins to do its tango with him again, speeding up as they strip pants and shoes and shirts, as they neck like teenagers and flump down on the bed with a laugh, hearts racing.

Then time slows as they sober and look at each other, breathing heavily, and Chris swallows as he realizes he has Karl in his bed, skin and muscles and eyebrow and dimples and issues and all—

So he kisses him, just because he can, rubbing their tongues together slowly, then starts in with his neck. Fitting, he thinks, with the lifeline so close to the skin, practically bared for him.

At the first bite, Karl gasps and bucks his hips. "Chris…"

"Yeah?" Chris murmurs before taking another bite, then soothing the skin with his tongue.

"I'm fucked up right now." His hands move restlessly over Chris' shoulders and neck.

"I know." Another bite, a lick along a collarbone.

"I'll be gone a lot." He's shifted a little with every kiss until suddenly his legs are around Chris and Chris is settled in the cradle of his hips, full throttle contact. They both suck in air.

"So will I." Chris ventures further down to tease a nipple, suck and lick until Karl's hand grips the back of his neck.

"There will be scandal and rumors and photogs everywhere we go." The friction between their cocks is rough, heady, and Chris knows that he is time's bitch so he'd better fucking get a move on.

"I'm kinda used to that." He moves away just enough to reach the bedside table, then comes back to land kisses up Karl's chest and neck to where he started.

"I'll be no good for you."

Chris shakes his head. Supporting himself on one hand next to Karl's head, kissing the hell out of Karl, Chris shifts so he can get one slick finger into Karl. "Jesus," gasps into their shared air, and he's not sure who said it.

He sets up a rhythm, searching Karl's face. Then he kisses him again, lightly, tongue mimicking finger and Karl groans into his mouth. He pulls back and looks him hard in the eye as he adds a second finger. "Bullshit."

Karl's already huge eyes widen impossibly, the pupils large and dark, and Chris falls into them. He barely makes it to three fingers before they're both panting, more than ready. Chris fumbles with the condom like a fifteen-year-old until Karl takes pity on him, stilling his hands for a steadying kiss, then taking over.

And when Chris is finally inside him, just enough to make them both moan, time very nearly stops. It threatens to hold him there, freeze them in this position, and although it's a nice moment, Chris doesn't want it to be the only one. Plus there's—

He unsticks his tongue. "This works. See?" Leans down, to kiss him. "We work. Fucked up or perfectly fine, Mr. Urban… " He lets his head fall, until they're cheek to cheek, then he thrusts home. "…I love you."

Karl's legs tighten around his torso and he feels a hand on the scruff of his neck, pulling him back so Karl can look him in the eye. His eyes are twinkling. "You cheeky little shit."

Chris grins at him, so ridiculously wide he can feel his own teeth, then kisses Karl again as he starts experimentally thrusting. Karl plays right into his hands, hips stuttering to move with Chris', to urge Chris' on. They find a rhythm quickly, easily, Chris' one hand holding him up while the other runs up and down Karl's thigh, pulled in and up and tight. Karl puts his back into it, of course he does, meeting Chris' thrusts and then some.

Then Karl's hand moves to stroke his cock, and Chris curses and has to stop with the kissing because this is just so fucking good. Instead he holds his mouth close to Karl's and holds on, begging time to slow down again as it sprints past him in the base race for completion.

But it refuses, and before long he's hissing words between his teeth, begging for forgiveness. "Shit, Karl, I'm close. What can—"

Karl's free hand pulls Chris down for a kiss. "Shut up and come for me, already."

"Oh god," Chris hears himself keen lowly, then does exactly as told, the orgasm washing through his whole body, his brain, his psyche, his everything, as he hears Karl's answering cry and feels hotness spill between them and it all meshes together into what people must mean when they say 'bliss.'

\---

The room is hot and humid when he opens his eyes again, and finds himself laying mostly beside Karl, condomless but still sticky and sweaty. Karl's finger is making lazy circles on his chest, and he looks up to find Karl regarding him with a one of his serious faces.

"Thank you," Karl says simply.

Chris swallows. "Me too."

Karl's brows draw together slightly. "And… you know I…do…I just can't--"

"I know." Chris leans up to shut him up with a pressing kiss. "You're here, I'm here, and everything else will work itself out." Then he falls back on the bed, satiated and utterly pleased.

A surprisingly loud mewl floats up from the floor next to the bed, and suddenly there's a fluffy ball waddling its way up the comforter.

"Including this little fucker." Chris scoops her up. "So you're a girl-kitty, are you?" He scratches her under the chin. She instantly squinches her eyes shut and purrs. "Nothing but trouble, then." He looks up at Karl. "What should we name her?"

Karl's face is covered in a soft smile. "Athena."

Chris smiles too. "Goddess of war? Yeah, Jessica would approve."

"Jessica? Why do I have a feeling this name is going to be important in my future?"

The smile turns into a grin. "Because it's important in your present. It's the reason we're here." He looks at the kitten—Athena—again. "The reason all three of us are here."

\---

They surprise the _piss_ out of her outside of the stage door one night a few weeks later.

"Hey baby, what's—" Her hand flies to her mouth when she sees Karl. "Oh my fucking--"

“Jess," Chris interrupts with a hand-flourish and a smile, "this is Karl.”

“Holy Jesus yes it is.” Karl gives her an easy smile and she squeaks quietly. “Hi.”

He chuckles. “Hello.”

“Hi. I mean-- Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you, too. I hear you do a wicked Aussie accent.”

She lets out one of her sudden laughs. “Product of an obsession with Baz Luhrman.”

“Brilliant man, I’ve met him. Kind of a… “

“Douche?”

“I was going to go with—“

“Megalomaniacal genius?”

“Something more along those lines, yeah.” He looks at her for a second. “I can see why you like her, Pine.”

“Yeah, she’s a keeper.”

"Oh my god, stop it, you're making me blush." Jessica looks at Karl and shrugs. “Next time you have a fight, you can either come looking for him at Zach’s drinking tequila or my place eating Ben & Jerry’s."

“Duly noted,” Karl says solemnly.

She tucks her bag over her shoulder, looking from one to the other. "So are we going somewhere to get a drink? It's my Friday and I'm incredibly flustered."

“Yeah, that's weird," Chris points out curiously. "You didn't get all—" He makes one of his hopelessly swirly gestures. "—when you met me.”

"Well, a) you were hitting on me in a hotel bar."

"Point." Karl gives him a teasing look and Chris punches him lightly in the shoulder.

"And b) I—" She glances apologetically at Karl. "I know what kind of underwear the man wears, Chris. I ought to have _some_ shame."

Karl laughs, dimples and all, and Chris' heart does that retarded thing again. "Not necessary, as this one hasn't got any."

"Hey, fuck you."

"Not tonight, princess. If you know what I mean."

Chris resists the urge to knock him against the wall and teach him a lesson—with his tongue—but the desire to do so must be on his face because Jessica snorts, then laughs outright.

Karl turns to her, his eyes warm. "Seriously, though, I would like to buy you a drink. As a thank you."

She raises an eyebrow at him. "I accept. It was the kitten, wasn't it?"

Karl raises an eyebrow in return. His trumps the competition. "Maybe."

She does a fist pump. "I knew it! I am a genius!"

"You are a mental patient," Chris laughs as he slings an arm around them both.

"Not mutually exclusive, Mr. Pine." She grins. "Now let's go get pissed."

 **  
_FIN_   
**

**Author's Note:**

>  **Sources/Inspirations/Etc** : Benjamin Britten's _Peter Grimes, The Incredibles, High Fidelity, Reality Bites, Foxfire, Singin in the Rain, Pushing Tin, 10 Things I Hate About You, Benny & Joon, Garden State, When Harry Met Sally…., The Princess Bride_, Icewind Dale 2 (lol), Emily Saliers' patter before 'Galileo' on _1200 Curfews_ , Green Day’s _American Idiot_ , toastedtea's _Spin Wave_, [this PD2 interview](http://movies.about.com/library/weekly/aapd2cb080804b.htm), _Sports Night_ , Tori Amos' ['Hey Jupiter'](http://www.box.net/shared/80dom18lpp) , ['Never Seen Blue'](http://www.box.net/shared/ppkbg0vd3k) & ['She's Your Cocaine"](http://www.box.net/shared/gkzngh27b7), Ani Difranco's ['Untouchable Face'](http://www.box.net/shared/tfixt04rug), and, as always, Aaron Sorkin.  
>  **Notes** : Blame jazzy_peaches; when I made some offhand comment about a dumb story idea, she told me she wanted to read it, so here we are; she also beta'd it for me. Credit is due in _spades_ to verhalten; if you like any of this, it's probably the part she thought of; plus she beta'd as well. Also thanks to maypirate, fyrelily,  & withthepilot for encouraging the madness. And, of course, thanks to the home for all our red-headed step-children, st_rpf_marysue. ♥


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